Social media are now utilized extensively by Neighbourhood Watch-style initiatives; however, the impact social media have on the practices and mechanisms of community crime prevention remains under-theorized. Drawing on our observations of an Australian-based community crime prevention group over two-and-a-half years, this article develops a grounded theory of the mechanisms underpinning the group’s social media-facilitated practices of responding to local crime. We find that social media-facilitated Neighbourhood Watch is shaped by two phenomena that have yet to receive sustained attention in crime prevention research. These are swarm intelligence—a form of self-organization wherein collectives process information to solve problems that members cannot solve individually—and stigmergy: work that stimulates further work. In explaining how swarm intelligence and stigmergy interact with several of the long-acknowledged mechanisms and issues associated with Neighbourhood Watch, we emphasize the importance of examining how the media context of community crime prevention groups shapes their practices, behaviour and (in)efficacy.

中文翻译：

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预防犯罪，群体情报和耻辱感：了解社交媒体促进社区预防犯罪的机制

社交媒体现在已被“邻里守望”式的倡议广泛使用；但是，社交媒体对社区犯罪预防的实践和机制的影响仍然没有得到充分的理论证明。根据我们对一个澳大利亚社区犯罪预防小组在两年半的观察中得出的结论，本文提出了一种扎根的机制理论，该机制支持了该团体在社交媒体协助下应对当地犯罪的做法。我们发现，社交媒体促进的“邻居观察”是由两种现象构成的，这两种现象在犯罪预防研究中尚未受到持续关注。这些是群体智能（自组织的一种形式，其中集体处理信息以解决成员无法单独解决的问题），并且带有耻辱感：刺激进一步工作的工作。